GoC Considering Replacing RCAF Polaris Fleet

By: Mia Rabson, The Canadian Press - National Post 

Liberals consider replacing aging government VIP plane, RCAF transport fleet at up to $1.5B
A decision can't be made on the Polaris replacements until a choice has been made on new fighter jets since the mid-air refueling planes would have to be compatible

OTTAWA — Canada’s “flying Taj Mahal” is getting long in the tooth and may be in line for replacement.

The 31-year-old plane, used to transport the prime minister and the Governor General around the world, almost made Justin Trudeau late to see the real Taj Mahal last month after a mechanical issue during a refuelling stop in Rome delayed his flight to India.

It was the latest in a string of mechanical problems plaguing the plane, including a flap issue in October 2016 that required the aircraft return to Ottawa after 30 minutes after taking off with Trudeau on board en route to Belgium to sign the Canada Europe free trade deal.

The Rome problem involved a damaged sensor that had already been repaired at least once. The refuelling stop lasted almost three hours instead of the normal 90 minutes.

The VIP aircraft, an Airbus 310-300, is one of five planes in the Royal Canadian Air Force’s fleet of CC-150 Polaris military transport planes that were originally bought by Wardair for commercial flight use in 1987 and then purchased by the air force in 1992.

Four of the planes are used as military transports and two are capable of refuelling CF-18 fighter jets in flight. The fifth is used for VIP flights, including bringing the Queen to and from Canada when necessary.

A senior government official says the government is studying whether it’s time to replace the aging fleet.

“Are the planes getting old,” she asked. “Yes. Are we taking a look at renewing the fleet? Yes.”

A 2016 Department of National Defence work plan says it will cost between $500 million and $1.5 billion to replace the Polaris CC-150 fleet. An analysis of the options is to be completed this year and the new planes delivered between 2026 and 2036.

A decision can’t be made on the Polaris replacements until Canada has made a choice on its new fighter jets, since the mid-air refuelling planes would have to be compatible with the new fighter jets.

In 2013, reports showed the fleet of five CC-150s had an estimated retirement date of 2026.

Byrne Furlong, press secretary to Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan, said the government is continuing to extend the life of the CC-150s by balancing their use.

The 31-year-old plane – dubbed the “flying Taj Mahal” – almost made Justin Trudeau late to see the real Taj Mahal, after his flight to India was delayed last month because of a mechanical issue. Paul Chiasson/The Canadian Press/File

“Our government is committed to providing the Royal Canadian Air Force with the critical equipment it needs to be fully operational, now and in the future,” she said.

The VIP plane — known officially as Can Force One — was saddled with the Taj Mahal nickname by former Liberal leader Jean Chretien when, as Opposition leader in 1992, he objected to the cost of buying and turning the Airbus into a flying office for the prime minister. The $56 million price tag at the time included about $3 million to install a private compartment with a dining room, entertainment area, fold-out beds and a shower.

After he was elected prime minister, Chretien never flew on the plane. Attempts to sell it were unsuccessful and eventually the interior was downgraded to a smaller, less lavish VIP cabin that is still in use today. It has a bed, and small sitting room and limited communications capacity.

The power supply for government staff and journalists travelling along comes in the form of extension cords and power bars strung all along the cabin floor. There is no Wi-Fi and the prime minister’s communication with the ground while in flight is spotty and expensive.

The plane itself is far less fuel-efficient than more modern alternatives and its flying range is limited, sometimes requiring multiple refuelling stops.

The planes undergo heavy maintenance every six years. The last time was in 2013, when the ashtrays were finally removed from the seats, and it got a new coat of paint. That latter decision was heavily criticized when then-prime minister Stephen Harper’s office made specific requests about colour and design that many said were very similar to the Conservative party colours.

The United States is in the midst of renewing its Air Force One fleet. President Donald Trump this week said the government had signed a deal with Boeing worth $3.9 billion for two new 747s.

Interest in CAF Remains High - US Looking North of the Border for Recruitment Ideas

The Canadian Press, The Columbia Valley Pioneer

A sharp drop in Americans willing to sign up for their country’s armed forces attributed in part to a steady mass-media diet of wounded soldiers, wars without end, and mistreated veterans is a recruiting problem Canadian military brass say they don’t have — with exceptions.

Far more Canadians show interest in enlisting than the armed forces actually take in any given year. (Facebook/CanadianArmy)

This month, the Pentagon began a major initiative aimed at exploring the “myths” many Americans have about their military in an effort to counteract a growing reluctance to serve. North of the border, far more Canadians — by a factor of 10 — show interest in enlisting than the armed forces actually take in any given year.

“Over the past few years, we’ve had no difficulty in recruiting to meet the numbers assigned to us by the chain of command or the government of Canada,” said Col. Andre Demers, who heads recruiting efforts from his base at CFB Borden, Ont. “We’re meeting our overall recruiting goals, globally.”

The main problem on the recruiting end in Canada, according to Demers, is finding qualified applicants for the more specialized trades, such as medical personnel, aviation technicians or IT specialists where competition with civilian society is fierce.

“Overall, the interest in the Canadian Armed Forces is there,” Demers said. “We have enough people to generate enough qualified applicants that are reflecting Canadian society and values to meet our overall requirements.”

U.S. survey results show the proportion of youth who felt the military provided an attractive lifestyle plunged from 63 per cent to 35 per cent between 2004 to 2016. As a result, the new Pentagon initiative to address the “growing civilian-military divide” aims to introduce the American public to the “real lives” of individuals serving, and correct common myths about military life.

Part of the problem, the Pentagon says, is that fewer than one per cent of Americans are currently serving, leading to a “natural disconnect” between civilians and the military and a growing ignorance about the services.

“People are having fewer direct interactions with service members,” the U.S. Department of Defense says.

Even on a relative scale, the sheer size and needs of the U.S. military dwarfs its Canadian counterpart.

For example, the Americans estimate they need an average 264,000 new recruits each year to maintain the operational readiness of a standing military estimated at roughly 1.2 million. Canada, by contrast, seeks about 5,000 recruits each year for its regular forces of about 68,000 and about 5,000 people show interest every month.

David Perry, vice-president of the Canadian Global Affairs Institute, said the Canadian Armed Forces have less of an image problem than does the U.S. military. A key issue here, he said, is the time it takes from enlistment to getting newcomers into uniform and, as the terminology goes, “trained and effective.”

“In terms of the public image, the American military has remained much more in the public eye than the Canadian one has,” Perry said. “(But) getting people who are interested into the military is a larger problem than in the United States. It’s more of a bureaucratic and human resource issue than an attraction issue.”

Gen. Jonathan Vance, chief of Canada’s defence staff, said recently the military has several initiatives underway aimed at speeding up the recruitment process. The military is also specifically trying to attract more women, visible minorities, members of the LGBTQ community and other segments of society that have been historically under-represented.

“What we’re trying to do is normalize the system and make it better overall,” Vance told The Canadian Press. “There’s no question about it: We’re growing. And it’s going to start slow and it’s going to pick up.”

Christian Leuprecht, a professor at Royal Military College in Kingston, Ont., said the Canadian Armed Forces has generally looked to a bigger segment of the population from which to attract would-be soldiers than the U.S. traditionally has done.

“We have a broader pool of recruits by trying to make the Canadian Forces as inclusive as possible,” Leuprecht said. “We are not fighting turf wars over things like gays in the military and can women serve in combat trades. Those are all hatchets that we buried.”


Still, Canada’s efforts to make its forces more representative of the population — such as signing up fewer white men from rural areas of the Prairies and Maritimes — has proven challenging. For example, military brass are aiming to increase female participation to 25 per cent of serving personnel by 2025 — a goal made elusive by ongoing stories of sexual harassment by women who have enlisted.

“When you’re continually highlighting past problems with sexual impropriety, that’s probably not the best selling point at actually getting people in the door,” Perry said.

Colin Perkel, The Canadian Press

Is NATO’s Relationship with Democracy at Risk?

By: David Bercuson, PhD 

© 2018 FrontLine Defence (Vol 15, No 1)

Disquieting events are beginning to shake the North Atlantic Treaty Organization from within, and no sign yet that NATO is preparing itself to deal with the rise of political autarchy in states such as Romania, Poland and Turkey and perhaps a few more, mostly from what used to be Warsaw Pact countries.

In the early days of NATO, there was little concern among the alliance leaders over which members were authoritarian, police states, or anti-democratic. With the Cold War at its full height in the 1950s and 1960s, all it took for membership was a commitment to Article 5 of the NATO treaty, a half decent military, and an anti-communist government. So, Franco’s Spain, Salazar’s Portugal, Greece under the colonels, and Turkey (enduring a military coup almost every year), were just fine as alliance members.

With the end of the Cold War and the collapse of military government in Greece and Turkey, the rules changed. Member countries now had to be democracies (or aspiring democracies in some form), and for former Warsaw Pact countries, NATO membership practically became a precursor for joining the European Union. Thus, until a few years ago, a NATO country was considered to be a democracy in some form – and could be trusted on our side to receive military aid or assistance and even, in some cases, to share military secrets with.

In the last several years, driven partly by the refugee crisis in Europe – and the rise of far-right leaders in several NATO countries – the old NATO is starting to resemble something of a squabbling yard full of chickens arguing over their bird seed.

The most serious example is Turkey, which clamped down very hard on virtually every civil institution after the failed coup attempt in the summer of 2016. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had been increasingly authoritarian as to how he handles his political opposition, but in the two years after the coup collapsed, he has become the virtual dictator of Turkey. More recently, he has invaded Syria in a military campaign against Kurdish nationalists who were so instrumental in driving ISIS out of the region. These Kurds are, or were, aligned with the United States, which, needless to say, is not happy with Turkey’s military adventure.

In Poland, a government recently took power under symbols and using tropes of pre-Second World War Polish nationalism. They are unhappy at what they see as the United States’ reneging on an agreement to provide them with anti-missile protection, but they are also backing away from serious efforts initiated under the immediate post-Cold War regime to take responsibility for the roles many Poles took in the Holocaust of European Jewry in the Second World War. The bill recently passed by the Polish legislature, and signed by the president, makes it illegal to discuss “Polish death camps” – of which there were none (they were all German) – but also appears to make it a crime to discuss acts of Polish anti-Semitism during the war, of which there were more than enough.

The Government of Hungary has also showed several authoritarian signs recently as it took a sharp turn to the right after recent elections. In April 2017 the government passed a law to close the liberal-oriented Central European University, which was funded by Hungarian-born American philanthropist George Soros. At the time of the vote, Human Resources Minister Zoltan Balog allowed that the government was committed to stopping education carried out by “pseudo-civil society spy groups such as the ones funded by George Soros.”

The move to the right has even found fertile ground in eastern Germany, where the last election saw right-wing “Alternative for Germany” members elected to the Bundestag for the first time.

There are two paths open to NATO right now. First, it can ignore these disturbing tendencies and return to the days when the only qualification needed to join NATO was a willingness to fight Russia and its allies if a new major war broke out. Under these circumstances, it would be hard for a country like Canada to pretend there is anything noble about NATO.

The other is to begin to either suspend the NATO status of states that drift from democratic norms, such as Turkey or Poland and give them time to renew themselves and re-join the fold or throw them out. The problem with this solution is that it probably won’t work and, in the case of Turkey, keeping Russia as constricted as possible in its effort to find warm water ports would be permanently impaired.

The reality is that the world is not perfect and that NATO today is more constrained in what it can do in Europe than it was a decade ago. In the next year or so, these internal pressures on NATO will increase. At that time Canada, and the other NATO stalwarts who put the alliance together in the first place will have to take a hard look at a possible alternative.

===
Dr. Bercuson is a Research Fellow at the Canadian Global Affairs Institute (CGAI) and Director of the Centre for Military and Strategic Studies at the University of Calgary.

Is There a New Role for CAF in Iraq?

By: David Pugliese, Defence Watch

The Canadian military is currently examining how it can contribute to a new NATO training mission in Iraq.

More NATO troops will be headed to that country but NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg says they will not be involved in combat.

A Canadian Forces Griffon helicopter passes the Monastery of Mar Mattai/St Matthew, February 20, 2017 in northern Iraq. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Ryan Remiorz ORG XMIT: RYR111

Most of the NATO effort appears to be aimed at training ground forces and police.

At the same time, the U.S.-led coalition is decreasing its air support in Iraq.

American and Iraqi air force commanders say the coalition will launch fewer airstrikes in support of Iraqi forces and instead focus more on training Iraqi pilots. Currently, Iraqi F-16 pilots are trained in America and the maintenance and security of Iraq’s F-16s is largely carried out by U.S. contractors.


In addition, Iraq’s air force will assume more of the “missions, duties and responsibilities” against any effort against the Islamic State, according to a statement released by U.S. Air Forces Central Command.

Will Canadian Forces planners consider a role for the RCAF in the NATO mission?

The RCAF still has a presence in the region as the Polaris refueller has supported coalition fighter jets. C-130J Hercules have delivered supplies. Griffon helicopters are also attached to the mission, although since Canadian special forces are on the sidelines when it comes to training Kurdish forces it’s unclear how much support the helicopters are providing. (Details about Griffon flights are considered secret for security reasons.)

Canada could offer to continue using RCAF C-130Js to support cargo runs for a NATO training mission. The Griffons could be used to support in-country transportation for ground forces.

The Liberal government has committed the Canadian military to the Iraq mission until next year.

Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan has not given any indication when a potential Canadian NATO mission contribution could be decided.

On Friday, Chief of the Defence Staff Gen. Jon Vance told reporters that work on various options is still underway. “We are working diligently on plans including conducting reconnaissance and examining various options that I would ultimately be able to bring to the minister,” he said. “The timeline is to try and stay as relevant and with the flow of this conflict as we possibly can. So, there’s no point in adopting certain postures before it’s time to adopt that posture. We’re looking at all options. We’re certainly going to make certain that we stay as relevant and useful to the ultimate success of this conflict that we can.”

(With files from the Associated Press)